Jack Ma is a Chinese man who was born and groomed into who he is in a communist country He is the owner and founder of Alibaba, a top online market where people buy and sell things. His company was valued at $231 billion as of last month. His childhood was coupled with poverty and strife in a country that was still stagnant and struggling to establish itself. At the time, china was still struggling with communism while the rest adopted get-rich-quick schemes such as capitalism. In his childhood, he grew up as an ordinary poor boy in China who often awed at American tourists who visited China. He was raised in the old town of Hangzhou that is located in the southeastern part of china. Tourists often flocked the town because of its rich culture that was fuelled by a famous historical revolution. Through a tourist, he adopted the name Jack and used it until now. His world opened up to the possibility of life beyond china when the then president, Richard Nixon, visited the place in 1972. He was 12 years old, and the president’s visit was the closest he felt to America. Unlike most of the successful Chinese entrepreneurs, Jack never studied abroad (Logan, 2014). He was an academically challenged student who failed his college test twice. The test would be a determination of whether or not he could get into college. In that era, many alternatives did not exist for success.
The country was struggling to establish its dominance and was coupled with the challenges of a high population and unemployment issues. Therefore, getting ahead was coupled with a college degree and a subsequent job. For people like Jack, the future was weighed by so many uncertainties. He struggled with the usual reject that his job search presented. He was not the typical employable type. He was a fragile looking boy that had speech issues, and lacked the standard education needed for skillful jobs. Even so, he managed to secure a place at a local college and took up a teaching career in English. His fate would later change when he came to the USA as a Chinese translator. The irony in Jacks story is that he had never touched a computer before then. Ma did not know how to type and had never used the internet. One would assume that a technologically successful person like him would have a vast knowledge in Information Technology by the time he graduated college. The trip that changed his life was in 1995, a time when he was introduced to the radical world of internet in the USA. It is a wonder how the successful entrepreneur grew from zero knowledge of anything about computers to the establishment of a multi-billion company. When he came back home, he was enthusiastic about the internet. He wanted to analyze, study and know more about the search engine in which so many Americans were engrossed. After two subsequent fails, he got a team of people who were willing to spend on his dream. The Alibaba dream was no longer a pipe one. It came to be with just $50,000 as capital. From then on, life has not been the same for the entrepreneur
His company is an entity that is based in China, but handles transactions from all over the worldSouth (China Morning Post, 4). Jack is named among the top ten richest men in China. The company has even been well valued in Wall Street, and its sell increased by 1% from last week. It seems as though Alibaba’s value keeps decreasing and displacing other online search engines which proved to be good competitors when the company was starting. The company heavily premised on honesty and trust. Honesty is a value that Jack has always had. He saw it as the ultimate value on which his company could be premised. The reason is that his company deals with the people’s money. There have been situations where online marketing has gone foul. The trade involves buying or selling products to people you do not know. Therefore, Jack thought the best way would be to facilitate trust through honesty and transparency. The most successful companies should reflect the nature of their leaders. He strives to create an honest system and has created an account that retails the money in a transaction until the product is made available to the customer. Today, the company serves an approximate of $100 million people in a day from all over the globe. It has grown from making $1 to billions of dollars. The founder is a soft spoken individual who has always insisted on being rich early. In his motivational speeches, he usually urges his audience to be rich by 35. He had the opinion that being poor when one is past 35 years is their fault. Because he knows the pain in being poor, he has created thousands of job opportunities through his venture. Since its formation in 1999, Alibaba has grown and embraced the modern methods of technology. When it started, there was no advanced technology. With the growth of technology, the company has raised surprising and exceedingly high ranks. The extent is the founder is, usually, listed in Forbes magazine. Jack is, therefore, an inspirational figure of commitment, hard work and honesty.
References
Internet boom boosts ranks of China's super rich. (2014). South China Morning Post. Retrieved October 20, 2014, from http://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/1616490/internet-boom-boosts-ranks-chinas-super-rich
Logan, l. (2014). Jack Ma brings Alibaba to the U.S. CBSNews. Retrieved October 19, 2014, from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/alibaba-chairman-jack-ma-brings-company-to-america/
